c 
M2.SM. 


ADDRESS 


"NOV 


I 


•OF — ,.«*,  2  4 


Eugene  Davenport,  LL.  D. 


Dean  of  the  College  of  Agriculture 


OF  THE- 


University  of  Illinois 


-AT- 


THE  DEDICATION  OF  THE 


Hall  of  Agriculture 


OF  THE- 


University  of  Maine 


Jan.  20,  1909 


cu 


I 


ho 


Address  of  Eugene  Davenport,  LL.  D 


Agriculture  is  a  remarkable  occupation  for  a  number  of  significant 
reasons: 

1.  It  engages  the  time  and  attention  of  half  our  people  and  it  will 
always  absorb  the  lives  and  energies  of  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  race. 

2.  It  is  the  only  considerable  calling  in  which  the  home  is  situated  in 
close  connection  and  in  intimate  contact  with  the  heart  of  the  business  so 
that  all  members  of  the  family,  men,  women  and  children  alike,  live  in 
the  atmosphere  of  the  occupation  and  each  finds  some  useful  part  to  do  as 
a  contribution  to  the  general  effort;  that  is,  agriculture  is  not  only  an 
occupation  but  a  mode  of  life  as  well,  and  whatever  touches  to  uplift 
or  to  depress  the  one  is  bound  to  powerfully  react  upon  the  other. 

3.  The  conditions  of  country  life  are  peculiar  in  their  contribution 
to  health,  their  stimulus  to  personal  initiative  and  their  fostering  influ- 
ence upon  that  spirit  of  individualism  upon  which  rest  our  free  institutions 
and  our  democratic  government.  The  country  is  a  good  place  in  which 
to  be  born. 

4.  The  business  of  farming,  dealing  as  it  does  at  every  step  with 
the  subtlest  laws  of  nature,  is  capable  of  infinite  improvement  and  of  indefi- 
nite development  as  soon  and  as  rapidly  as  the  findings  of  science  are 
applied  to  its  affairs. 

5.  The  occupation  is,  and  from  the  nature  of  the  case  must  always  re- 
main, permanent  because  all  men  forever  must  subscribe  to  the  decree  of 
nature  and  eat,  for  food  is  the  fuel  that  feeds  the  human  engine,  and  in 
the  last  analysis  our  future  development  as  a  race  will  be  conditioned 
upon  our  success  in  providing  an  assured  and  independent  food  supply, 
abundant  and  suitable  for  a  highly  developed  and  always  advancing  civili- 
zation. 

6.  There  is,  therefore,  a  public  as  well  as  a  private  side  to  this  mat- 
ter of  agricultural  development;  and  it  is  because  of  this  public  and  ex- 
ceptional interest  in  this  particular  occupation  that  we  have  established 
and  maintained  at  general  expense  in  every  State  of  the  Union,  institu- 
tions whose  business  it  is  not  only  to  instruct  in  the  most  advanced  meth- 
ods of  agricultural  practice,  but  also  to  conduct  research  through  experi- 
ments by  the  most  approved  methods  with  a  view  of  adding  to  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  scientific  facts  and  principles  upon  which  further  develop- 
ment of  agriculture  and  of  country  life  may  be  established. 

In  this  connection  it  is  extremely  suggestive  that  educational  history 
shows  no  other  instance  in  which  teaching  and  investigation  have  so  con- 
sistently gone  along  together.  There  is  none  other  in  which  the  stand- 
ards of  the  classroom  and  the  laboratories  have  been  so  rapidly  adjusted 
and  readjusted  to  the  dictates  of  experimental  evidence;  nor  is  there  an- 
other instance  wherein  the  results  of  research  and  of  learning  have  so 
rapidly  taken  hold  of  the  lives  and  activities  of  large  masses  of  men  in 
such  a  way  as  not  only  to  notably  develop  their  occupation  but  also  to  en- 


rich  and  develop  their  own  lives  and  conditions  of  living  as  well.  In  short, 
agricultural  education  with  its  handmaid,  research,  are  having  an  effect 
in  developing  American  agriculture  and  American  farmers  that  is  more 
sudden,  more  pronounced,  more  far-reaching  and  of  wider  public  signi- 
ficance than  the  results  of  any  other  form  of  education,  private  or  public, 
industrial  or  non-industrial  that  has  ever  yet  been  devised  by  the  ingenu- 
ity or  needs  of  man. 

The  principal  aim  of  other  forms  of  education  in  the  past  was  to  ben- 
efit their  devotees  personally  without  much  regard  to  the  consequences, 
either  public  or  private.  Not  so  with  this  form  of  education.  Its 
primary  purpose  is  the  development  of  agriculture  as  a  productive  occupa- 
tion and  incidentally  and  necessarily  of  the  people  who  live  by  farming. 
In  other  words,  its  first  objective  is  distinctly  a  public  one,  and  all  other 
considerations  are  secondary  and  subsidiary. 

Now  the  public  is  not  interested  in  the  question  whether  John  Smith 
succeeds  or  fails  at  farming;  indeed  it  does  not  care  whether  he  farms  at 
all  or  what  he  does  or  does  not  do  so  long  as  he  does  not  become  a  public 
charge  and  so  long  as  he  continues  to  contribute  some  share  to  the  public 
good. 

But  the  public  is  interested  that  somebody  should  succeed  in  farm- 
ing. More  than  that,  it  is  interested  that  enough  should  succeed  and 
that  they  should  succeed  well  enough  to  operate  the  land  to  the  best  ad- 
vantage and  provide  an  assured  food  supply  for  all  the  people.  Now  the 
lands  cannot  be  operated  to  the  best  advantage  by  an  ignorant  peasantry. 
Only  men  of  good  parts  educated  in  the  principles  involved  can  handle 
these  lands  in  such  a  way  as  to  secure  a  maximum  of  human  and  animal 
food  at  the  least  expense  and  at  the  same  time  preserve  their  producing 
power  against  future  needs. 

And  so  it  is  that  the  aims  and  purposes  of  agricultural  education  and 
research  are  primarily  the  promotion  of  the  public  safety  in  the  matter  of 
a  racial  food  supply,  to  which  matter  the  education  and  information  of 
individuals  is  an  essential  but  subsidiary  incident;  which  incident,  however, 
is  certain  to  result  in  producing  a  country  population  of  a  superior  type, 
all  of  which  also  reacts  powerfully  upon  the  public  good  in  matters  both 
social  and  political. 

In  the  last  analysis  and  reduced  to  the  lowest  terms,  therefore,  the 
fundamental  purpose  of  agricultural  education  and  research  is  the  develop- 
ment of  agriculture  as  a  productive  occupation  and  of  the  agricultural 
people  as  a  numerous  and  important  part  of  the  social  and  political  fabric. 

Development  is,  therefore,  the  central  thought  in  educational  activity 
along  agricultural  lines  today  and  the1  development  of  American  agricul- 
ture to  its  highest  attainable  estate  both  as  a  business  and  as  a  mode  of 
life  is  the  high  purpose  for  which  the  agricultural  colleges  and  experiment 
stations  were  founded  and  are  supported  by  a  far-seeing  and  liberal- 
minded  public.  It  is  profitable,  and  in  every  way  highly  important  that 
we  all  pause  a  moment  from  time  to  time  to  gain  the  clearest  and  most 
comprehensive  understanding  possible  of  all  that  is  involved  in  this  whole 
matter.  Accordingly,  that  we  may  all  alike  be  intelligent  and  work  to- 
gether to  a  common  end  in  so  important  an  undertaking,  I  invite  your 
attention  somewhat  carefully  to  the  details  of  this  development  which  may 
be  briefly  outlined  under  six  fairly  definite  propositions  as  follows: 

1.  An  agriculture  profitable.  The  first  step  in  the  development  of 
any  business  is  to  "make  it  pay."  Whatever  we  may  say  about  the  glories 
of  country  life,  and  it  is  much;    whatever  the  songs  we  sing  of  the  free 

4 


air.  the  twittering  birds  and  the  blessed  sunshine,  and  they  are  many; 
after  all  and  before  all,  farming  is  a  business,  and  the  first  and  the  fun- 
damental step  in  its  development  is  to  put  it  on  a  paying  basis.  Our 
colleges  and  our  experiment  stations  have  done  well,  therefore,  to  de- 
vote their  first,  and  up  to  this  time,  their  principal  efforts,  to  the  business 
of  increasing  the  profits  of  farming.  In  the  past,  farming  was  not  a 
capitalized  industry  and  such  a  thing  as  failure  was  almost  impossible. 
From  now  on,  however,  farming  is  to  be  a  capitalized  occupation  and 
failure  will  be  relatively  easy;  for  the  new  discoveries  of  science,  while 
they  tend  to  establish  the  business  on  a  sounder  basis,  do  not  make  it 
easier  in  the  sense  of  better  adapting  it  to  the  novice  or  to  men  of  low 
capacity.  Agriculture  is  rapidly  becoming  more  difficult,  calling  not  for 
less  but  for  more,  of  brains,  of  knowledge  and  of  executive  ability  as 
well  as  of  capital.  This  is  rapidly  challenging  the  attention  of  the  bright- 
est men,  who  will  be  attracted  into  the  calling  about  in  proportion  as 
they  can  feel  the  possibility  of  reasonable  profits. 

Xo  business  can  hold  the  respect  and  the  services  of  men  of  ability 
except  it  afford  them  a  reasonable  reward  for  what  they  put  into  it,  and 
certainly  no  occupation  can  commend  itself  to  ambitious  young  men 
until  it  offers  promise  of  a  good  and  reliable  income. 

In  this  connection  it  is  most  significant  to  note  the  increased  respect 
for  agriculture  and-  the  new  interest  in  farming  and  in  country  life  that 
commenced  to  spring  up  among  all  classes  almost  immediately  upon  the  work 
of  the  college  and  station  in  showing  how  to  begin  to  put  this  business 
on  a  scientific  and  paying  basis,  and  it  is  significant,  too,  that  we  now 
hear  less  and  see  less  of  the  drift  from  the  farm  to  the  town  and  that 
men  of  sound  business  sense  and  wide  experience  are  beginning  to  look 
to  the  land  and  to  agriculture  not  only  as  a  safe  business  but  in  every 
way  a  desirable  occupation.  This  is  the  main  influence  that  will  regu- 
late the  flow  from  the  country  to  the  town  and  hold  in  check  the  insane 
rush  of  young  men  cityward  that  we  have  all  deplored  for  now  these 
many  years. 

2.  An  agriculture  productive.  It  is  not  enough  that  agriculture 
should  be  profitable.  In  its  development  it  must  also  become  in  the  very 
near  future  enormously  productive.  How  pressing  this  point  will 
shortly  become  few  people  are  able  to  realize,  so  abundantly  have  the 
virgin  soils  of  this  country  produced  in  the  past;  so  boundless  have 
been  their  extent  and  so  small  has  our  population  been  almost  up  to 
the  present  day. 

A  little  careful  consideration,  however,  will  speedily  show  that 
conditions  in  this  respect  are  to  undergo  a  fundamental  change  in  the 
very  near  future  indeed. 

Under  good  conditions,  the  human  animal  can  double  his  numbers 
every  twenty-five  years.  By  the  aid  of  immigration  and  despite  the 
ravages  of  four  wars,  we  have  maintained  this  rate  of  increase  in  this 
country  since  the  Revolution  and  the  population  of  the  United  States 
doubled  four  times  in  the  last  hundred  years.  If  we  maintain  this  rate 
of  increase  for  another  century  and  something  is  wrong  if  we  do  not — 
if  we  maintain  this  rate  of  increase — we  should  have  in  this  country  an 
hundred  years  from  now  no  less  than  twelve  hundred  millions  of  peo- 
ple, a  hundred  millions  of  whom  should  live  in  Illinois.  Under  these 
conditions  not  less  than  thirty  millions  should  live  in  the  State  of  Maine, 
— that  is,  the  population  of  the  entire  United  States  at  the  time  of  the 
Civil  War  would  then  be  crowded  into  a  single  one  of  our  smaller  States 
and  within  the  present  century. 

5 


For  various  reasons  this  ratio  of  increase  cannot  much  longer  be 
maintained,  yet  it  is  the  natural  rate  and  it  tends  to  show  us  what  would 
come  about  under  normal  conditions  within  a  century, — and  what  is  a 
century  in  the  life  history  of  a  people? 

Believe  me,  race  suicide  if  it  comes  will  be  due  not  to  a  failure  of 
the  birth  rate;  it  will  be  from  our  sheer  neglect  to  maintain  conditions 
that  will  insure  food  for  the  people.  This  is  the  form  of  race  sui- 
cide against  which  we  need  most  to  protect  ourselves,  and  it  is  none 
too  soon  to  begin.  The  world  has  not  yet  learned  how  to  feed  such  a 
population  as  is  just  ahead  and  before  the  present  century  is  ended  the 
largest  single  public  issue  will  be  that  of  bread. 

Within  the  lifetime  of  children  born  today,  scarcity  of  labor  will 
be  a  matter  of  history,  and  abundance  of  cheap  food  will  be  a  tale  that 
is  told  by  the  gran'ther  in  his  chimney  corner  dozing  in  his  dotage. 
We  are  educating  in  our  schools  today  a  generation  of  children  to  live 
a  life  that  we  ourselves  have  never  seen  and  that  history  does  not  record, 
and  that  we  do  not  ourselves  understand;  and  we  do  well  if  we  soberly 
calculate  what  their  conditions  of  life  are  likely  to  be  and  mend  our 
methods  accordingly. 

We  were  three  hundred  years  in  getting  a  population  of  five  mil- 
lions of  people,  so  slowly  do  numbers  pile  up  when  the  base  is  small, 
whatever  the  ratio,  but  we  have  increased  ninety  millions  in  the  last 
hundred  years.  I  very  well  remember  when  our  population  was  but 
thirty  millions  and  I  am  no  relative  of  Methusaleh,  either.  Many  of 
you  remember  when  it  was  but  fifteen,  but  now  it  has  reached  approxi- 
mately one  hundred  millions.  With  such  a  base  and  with  modern  con- 
ditions of  life,  this  country  can  and  will  produce  men  at  a  rate  the 
world  has  never  seen.  We  can  now  produce  in  this  country  as  much 
increased  population  in  the  next  twenty-five  years  as  we  produced  in 
the  whole  four  hundred  years  since  its  discovery  by  white  men,  and  we 
can  produce  twice  as  many  more  in  the  next  twenty-five.  In  fifty  years 
from  now  we  shall  have  the  population  of  China  in  this  country,  unless 
something  goes  wrong,  and  it  is  the  business  of  agriculture  to  learn  how 
to  feed  them,  and  feed  them  well.  Wheal  it  has  learned  this,  it  will  have 
learned  many  a  lesson  the  colleges  do  not  now  know  how  to  teach. 

We  have  thought  but  little  on  these  things  because  all  of  our  ex- 
perience has  been  with  an  insufficient  population  and  we  have  courted 
immigration  as  a  source  of  labor.  Had  you  thought  of  it,  with  pur  pres- 
ent population  we  can  in  ten  years  duplicate  every  emigrant  dead  or 
alive  that  ever  touched  this  country.  We  have  never  yet  been  conscious 
of  our  population  as  far  as  adults  are  concerned,  because  we  have  had 
room  and  food  and  labor  in  superabundance.  But  we  have  never  gone 
up  against  such  numbers  as  are  just  ahead,  the  whisperings  of  whose 
coming  is  in  the  housing  and  teaching  of  our  now  enormous  child  popu- 
lation. When  Chicago  calls  for  eight  million  dollars  worth  of  additinal 
public  school  buidings  in  the  next  two  years,  you  hear  from  a  tide  of 
young  humanity  whose  numbers  and  reproducing  powers  will  make  new 
problems  for  our  race  and  for  its  agriculture  to  solve.  Not  the  least  of 
these  will  relate  to  the  power  of  the  land  to  produce  food  for  man  and 
the  animals  he  has#domesticated. 

Aye!  for  the  animals — there  is  another  rub.  We  revel  now  in  the 
luxury  of  animal  life.  Every  family,  on  the  average,  has  a  horse,  four 
head  of  cattle,  four  sheep  and  four  pigs  with  some  few  millions  to  spare. 
They  literally  work  and  eat  and  root   for  us  and   we  consume  their  bodies 


and  their  body  products  with  a  prodigality  that  no  dense  population  has 
ever  yet  found  possible.  Now  animal  service  is  an  expensive  luxury 
when  food  becomes  costly.  Animal  food  is  approximately  ten  times  as 
expensive  as  vegetable;  that  is  to  say,  it  takes  ten  pounds  of  grain  to 
make  a  pound  of  flesh,  which  is  no  more  valuable  for  supporting  life  than 
is  any  one  of  the  ten  pounds  of  grain  that  went  to  make  it. 

Our  descendants  will  face  the  day  when  they  must  surrender  some 
of  this  animal  life  as  surely  as  they  face  the  day  of  their  birth,  and  when 
we  consider  the  fact  that  economic  nitrogen  production  involves  legumi- 
nous plants  that  are  fit  only  for  animal  food,  we  will  begin  to  see  how 
complicated  is  the  problem  of  developing  an  agriculture  sufficiently  pre 
ductive  to  meet  coming  conditions  without  distress. 

3.  An  agriculture  permanent.  The  conditions  that  have  just  been 
discussed  will  not  be  temporary  and  transient;  they  will  be  enduring,  yes, 
permanent,  and  they  must  be  met  by  a  permanent  agriculture — a  thing 
the  world  has  never  yet  succeeded  in  establishing.  No  race  has  ever  yet 
learned  to  feed  itself  except  at  the  expense  of  fertility  of  their  own  or 
some  other  country.  Other  races  have  come  up  against  this  problem  and 
have  gone  down  under  it. 

Where  is  Carthage  today?  Where  is  Egypt,  whose  civilization  once 
flourished  upon  fertility  brought  down  from  the  highlands  of  a  great 
interior?  What  of  Palestine,  that  once  flowed  with  milk  and  honey  and 
blossomed  as  the  rose,  but  now  supports  only  a  miserable  and  straggling 
population  of  wandering  Arabs?  What  of  Babylon,  amid  whose  "heaps" 
the  jackal  snarls  where  once  kings  held  revelry  and  where  civilization  was 
born  in  the  richest  river  valley  in  all  the  earth?  What  of  India,  where  strug- 
gling millions  maintain  their  racial  existence  at  the  cost  of  periodic  and 
decimating  famine  relieved  from  other  regions  that  have  not  yet  met  the 
"Great  Issue"?  What  of  China?  With  a  population  of  four  hundred 
to  the  square  mile,  it  must  presently  either  move  or  starve.  It  is  pointed 
out  as  a  people  who  have  solved  in  some  uncanny  way  the  problem  of 
a  permanent  agriculture  and  a  permanent  food  supply,  yet  good  authority 
says  that  on  the  highlands  are  regions  once  peopled  and  now  abandoned, 
where  for  stretches  of  ten  miles  no  man  lives. 

What  of  England?  She  is  a  new  country,  yet  she  long  ago  faced  failing 
fertility  and  built  fleets  of  ships  to  carry  guano  from  the  South  Sea  Is- 
lands, and  within  the  recollection  of  men  sitting  here,  she  has  exhausted 
these  beds  that  the  seabirds  have  been  ages  in  producing.  Not  only  that, 
she  has  brought  mummies  from  Egypt  to  fertilize  English  soil  that  the 
Englishman  might  have  his  beef,  while  bread  riots  wage  in  London.  So 
narrow  is  the  margin  on  which  English  agriculture  is  maintained  that 
good  judges  say  that  the  law  of  primogeniture  is  the  only  fact  that  makes 
beef  production  still  possible  in  England. 

Our  Federal  Government  announces  the  newly  discovered  theory  that 
lands  do  not  wear  out,  but  the  fact  remains  that  large  sections  of  Old 
Virginia  are  so  worn  as  to  be  abandoned  and  families  that  once  enter- 
tained presidents  and  foreign  diplomats,  now  that  the  wheat  yield  has 
dropped  to  ten  per  cent  its  former  magnitude,  eke  out  the  income  by 
keeping  summer  boarders. 

Every  intelligent  man  knows  that  the  old  cotton  and  tobacco  lands 
of  the  South  are  badly  worn  and  have  lost  forever  their  power  of  spon- 
taneous production.  That  great  grain-growing  region  in  southern  Illinois, 
known  locally  as  Egypt,  was  so  exhausted  by  farming  to  wheat  and  red 
*»p    lay    as    to    be    no    longer    able    to  support  its   population   in      comfort 

7 


and  it  turned  to  mining  and  mine  props  until  the  work  of  the  University 
showed  how  its  productive  power  might  be  restored  at  reasonable  cost. 
Here  was  an  area  large  enough  to  make  ten  such  States  as  Rhode  Island, 
exhausted  so  far  as  profitable  agriculture  is  concerned  by  two  genera- 
tions of  grain  farming,  until  the  land  became  in  local  parlance  "too  poor 
to  raise  a  disturbance."  Some  of  it  is  being  rapidly  restored  by  methods 
devised  by  the  Experiment  Station  but  the  saddest  fact  is  that  the  effects 
of  soil  impoverishment  had  in  some  cases  gone  so  far  as  to  affect  the 
people,  and  they  were  unable  to  raise  even  the  small  initial  cost  of  restora- 
tion, in  which  case,  of  course,  the  problem  must  go  over  to  men  of  capital 
who  had  sojourned  on  more  fortunate  lands. 

No  man  can  study  for  a  moment  the  entirely  new  conditions  and  prob- 
lems that  will  confront  our  people  in  the  immediate  future  without  real- 
izing that  the  establishment  of  agricultural  colleges  and  experiment  sta- 
tions was  the  largest  act  of  foresighted  wisdom  in  recorded  history,  nor  can 
he  fail  to  realize  that  their  adequate  maintenance  and  fostering  support  is 
not  only  the  first  duty  but  one  of  the  highest  public  privileges  of  the 
commonwealth  of  our  day  and  time. 

There  is  to  be,  in  the  very  near  future,  a  struggle  for  land  and  the 
food  it  will  produce,  such  as  the  world  has  never  yet  beheld.  He  who 
knows  where  and  how  to  look  can  see  it  coming.  The  African  activity 
among  western  European  nations  is  a  part  of  it.  It  is  always  cheaper  to 
move  when  over-population  and  failing  fertility  threaten  a  shortage  of 
food — providing  there  is  any  place  to  move  into;  that  is,  providing  we 
can  dispossess  the  other  party  and  his  land  is  worth  the  contest. 

However  that  may  be  as  an  abstract  proposition,  for  us  there  is  no  mov- 
ing. For  us  there  are  no  more  "new  worlds."  For  us  there  is  little  more 
"Out  West."  Our  fortune  and  our  future,  whatever  they  may  be,  are 
staked  down  on  the  American  Continent.  Literally  "Here  we  rest,"  and 
whether  we  like  it  or  not,  we  must  devise  and  establish  a  permanent  ag- 
riculture or  go  down  in  the  attempt. 

Our  descendants  will  certainly  be  as  cultured  as  we;  they  ought  to 
be  more  so.  Their  needs  surely  will  not  be  fewer  or  of  a  more  modest 
character.  Their  numbers  will  be  vastly  greater  and  unless  we,  not  they, 
can  succeed  in  finding  a  permanent  agriculture,  the  race  will  degenerate 
and   end  where   it  commenced   in   poverty  and   barbarism. 

I  have  already  pointed  out  that  restorative  and  permanent  systems 
must  be  established  before  the  people  are  in  distress  for  the  necessities 
of  life.  Afterward  it  cannot  be  done.  It  is  we  who  must  discover  and 
establish  this  permanent  system.  There  is  no  time  to  be  lost,  for  we 
do  not  yet  know  how  to  do  it  and  a  stupendous  population  is  just  upon 
us.  It  is  none  too  soon  to  attack  with  all  the  scientific  vigor  of  all  the 
Experiment  Stations  of  all  the  States  this  perfectly  stupendous  problem 
which  will  shortly  bear  harder  upon  us  than  upon  any  contemporaneous 
race  in  the  world  except  the  Hindus  and  the  Chinese  who  have  almost 
certainly  delayed  too  long  and  lost  their  chance.  European  nations  will 
be  occupied  for  generations  yet  in  exploiting  Africa  and  perhaps  South 
America  and  we  before  any  other  modern  nation  must  face  this  issue  of 
a  permanent  agriculture. 

We  have  no  right  to  dodge  this  issue  now  while  we  are  few  and 
young  and  wealthy.  It  is  our  own  descendants  whose  lives  and  hap- 
piness we  literally  hold  in  the  hollow  of  our  hands  and  he  who  shirks 
that  responsibility  is  guilty  of  a  crime  against  his  race  beside  which  ordi- 
nary treason  is  trivial;    and   when  we  are  called,  as  we  are,  to  the  task 

8 


of  establishing  if  we  can  a  permanent  agriculture,  it  is  a  call  of  the  race 
for  a  chance  to  live  and  work  out  its  destiny. 

So  much  for  what  may  be  called  the  business  side  of  farming — an 
agriculture  that  is  reasonably  profitable,  highly  productive  and  certainly 
permanent.  What  now  on  the  human  side?  What  is  the  development 
of  the  farmer  as  a  man  to  match  the  development  of  his  business  as 
an  occupation?  And  so  I  come  to  the  next  count  in  our  series  of  de- 
velopment. 

4.  The  country  comfortable.  Agriculture  is  not  only  a  business;  it 
is  a  mode  of  life  as  well,  and  if  it  is  to  be  successful  in  the  latter  par- 
ticular it  must  in  the  end  afford  its  devotees  the  same  comforts  of  life 
as  are  attainable  in  other  occupations.  This  has  not  hitherto  been  pos- 
sible, but  its  early  realization  is  becoming  every  day  more  promising  and 
if  the  colleges  and  stations  perform  their  whole  duty  in  this  direction 
and  if  they  are  supported  by  the  people  as  they  ought  to  be  supported, 
then  one  of  the  earliest  and  most  distinctive  developments  of  our  agri- 
culture will  be  in  creature  comforts  on  the  farm. 

This  development  will  largely  take  the  special  form  of  modern  con- 
veniences including  labor-saving  equipments  in  the  farmhouse.  The  farm- 
er has  provided  himself  with  all  sorts  of  machinery  and  ingenious  me- 
chanical devices  not  only  to  cheapen  production  but  to  make  the  labor  eas- 
ier for  himself,  his  hired  help  and  even  his  animals.  In  the  meantime 
his  wife  gets  on  with  few  improvements  and  with  no  real  conveniences, 
living  and  scraping  along  as  best  she  can  against  the  day  when  the  fam- 
ily shall  be  able  to  build  its  home  in  town  and  "have  the  conveniences." 
By  modern  conveniences  is  generally  meant  bath-room  and  toilet  facilities, 
heat,  a  lighting  system  and  running  water  inside  the  house.  That  is  about 
all,  but  it  would  take  a  book  to  recite  what  has  been  sacrificed  in  going  to 
town   to  get  these  things. 

The  farmer  has  abandoned  his  business.  He  has  broken  up  his  chil- 
dren's home.  He  has  exposed  his  little  ones  to  the  unbridled  dangers  of 
the  small  town.  He  has  set  before  them  the  example  of  idleness.  He  has 
turned  his  back  upon  the  farm  that  has  made  his  wealth  and  stripped  the 
land  of  its  fertility  to  build  in  the  town  the  home  to  which  the  farm  was 
entitled.  He  has  stripped  the  country  of  its  earnings  to  build  up  the  city 
and  add  to  its  numbers  a  wholly  useless  and  undesirable  population.  So 
common  has  this  thing  become  as  to  excite  public  alarm  and  no  one  topic 
rings  a  more  significant  note  through  the  findings  of  the  Country  Life  Com- 
mission than  the  abandonment  of  the  farm  at  the  stage  of  house  building. 

The  uselessness  of  all  this  under  even  present  conditions  was,  I 
think,  first  called  to  public  attention  is  an  address  by  Mrs.  Davenport  at 
the  Illinois  Farmers'  Institute  at  Peoria  in  February  of  last  year.  She 
had  had  an  extensive  experience  on  the  farm  and  had  lived  a  good  num- 
ber of  years  in  town.  With  a  natural  mechanical  instinct  and  some  ex- 
perience in  building,  she  saw  how  thoroughly  the  conveniences  and  the 
l^or  of  the  house  had  been  overlooked,  relatively  speaking,  by  both  in- 
ventor and  designer  except  where  conditions  of  life,  as  in  the  city,  com- 
pelled some  decent  attention  to  sanitary  measures,  evolving  the  bath- 
room, the  toilet  and  the  slop  sink.  She  saw  how  completely  the  labor 
of  the  house  had  been  left  to  servants  in  the  homes  of  the  wealthy  or 
endured  by  the  wife  unable  to  afford  a  servant,  neither  of  which  condi- 
tions developed  conveniences  for  performing  the  household  labor.  This 
comparative  poverty  in  house  equipment  is  also  partly  due  to  lack  of  at- 
tention on  the  part  of  inventors  and  manufacturers,  all  of  which  is  trace- 


able  to  another  initial  abomination — that  ancient  and  dishonorable  cus- 
tom by  which  the  husband  carries  the  pocketbook  and  so  often  opens  it 
only  upon  humiliating  supplication  for  a  share  of  what  the  wife  on  the 
farm  has  fairly  earned. 

Mrs.  Davenport  knew  that  conditions  had  commenced  to  mend  them- 
selves in  certain  particulars  and  were  capable  of  still  further  improve- 
ment. Accordingly  she  set  out  to  learn  how  far  and  to  what  extent  the 
farm  house  can  now  be  equipped  not  only  with  the  so-called  modern  con-  ■ 
veniences,  but  with  still  further  devices  for  saving  labor.  The  results  of 
her  study  were  given  in  the  address  already  referred  to  and  may  be  brief- 
ly summarized  as  follows: 

The  enterprise  of  the  best  farmers  in  equipping  the  farm  with  ma- 
chinery has  already  reached  the  stage  of  the  small  gasolene  engine  for 
running  the  machinery  of  the  barns  and  especially  for  pumping  water,  gen- 
erally into  small  or  elevated  tanks  subject  to  freezing,  an  evolution  from 
the  old  and  unreliable  wind  mill. 

Beginning  at  this  point  with  the  gasolene  engine  which  stands  as  a 
kind  of  connecting  link  between  the  machinery  of  the  farm  and  that  of 
the  house,  it  appears  that  this  little  engine,  first  of  all,  can  pump  water, 
both  hard  and  soft,  into  the  Kewanee  automatic  system  and  secure  a 
pressure  of  70  pounds  per  square  inch  in  air  tight  tanks  standing  in  the 
basement  or  buried  in  the  ground  beyond  the  reach  of  frost.  This  is  as 
good  as  the  best  city  pressure  and  is  abundant  to  throw  water  over  any 
of  the  buildings,  carry  it  into  both  house  and  barn  and  nearby  fields  and 
put  both  hard  and  soft  water,  hot  and  cold,  on  all  the  floors  of  the  house. 
It  will  also  run  a  water  motor — cost,  six  dollars, — sufficiently  powerful  to 
operate  the  washing  machine  and  do  the  hardest  part  of  the  hardest  job 
about  any  home — all  for  six  dollars,  under  pressure.  This  same  engine  can 
run  a  gasolene  heated  mangle  with  a  capacity  of  a  napkin  a  minute  or  a 
table  cloth  every  six  minutes.  It  may  also  operate  storage  battery  elec- 
tric light  plant.  Not  only  that — it  can  furnish  the  power  for  the  churn 
and  other  small  machinery,  and  last  of  all,  it  can  operate  a  vacuum  clean- 
er system  whose  installation  in  the  private  house  is  now  entirely  feasible. 

Besides  this,  the  soil  absorption  system  will  care  for  the  waste  from 
bath-room,  laundry  and  slop  sink  as  completely  and  as  satisfactorily  as 
the  best  city  sewer.  If  economy  is  imperative,  acetylene  or  gasolene  may 
be  substituted  for  the  electric  lights,  or  if  electricity  is  used,  the  small 
machinery  may  be  operated  by  electric  motors. 

This  is  actually  being  done  on  the  farm  now  in  many  cases.  A  few 
months  ago  our  Engineering  Experiment  Station  issued  a  bulletin  on  elec- 
tric lighting  of  private  houses.  You  will  be  interested  to  know  that  we 
have  had  more  calls  for  this  material,  which  was  reprinted  as  a  circular 
by  the  Agricultural  Experiment  Station,  than  for  anything  ever  issued  by 
the  Station,  showing  most  significantly  the  direction  and  the  drift  of  the 
public  mind. 

Here  we  have  water  pressure,  bath  and  toilet  room,  a  lighting  plant, 
power  laundry  machinery,  vacuum  cleaner, — all  that  the  city  home  can 
secure  in  the  way  of  modern  conveniences  and  more  than  can  be  had 
there,  except  with  difficulty,  for  city  residences  commonly  do  not  possess  a 
source  of  power, — all  this,  as  well  as  in  the  city  and  better. 

I  was  amazed,  optimist  though  I  am,  at  the  results  of  this  investiga- 
tiom;  at  the  possibilities  of  the  independent  plant;  at  what  can  be  done, 
not  in  the  future,  but  now  in  the  equipment  of  the  farm  home  with  the  con- 
veniences of  human  life. 

It 


But,  you  will  say,  think  of  the  expense!  Yes,  it  is  costly;  all  good 
things  are  costly.  Farm  machinery  is  costly,  especially  a  reaper  that  is 
seldom  operated  ten  days  out  of  the  year  and  lasts  on  the  average  but 
three  years.  It  is  all  costly,  but  remember  that  we  are  talking  now  about 
a  class  of  people  who  ride  always  in  covered  carriages,  drive  good  horses 
and  are  able  to  go  to  town  to  live. 

Now  an  entire  bath-room  outfit  can  be  bought  and  installed  for  the 
price  of  a  single  covered  buggy  and  it  will  outlast  the  buggy  a  half  dozen 
times  over.  The  stationary  vacuum  cleaner,  that  acme  of  comfort  and  lux- 
ury, will  cost  the  price  of  a  good  horse  or  a  medium  team,  or  in  portable 
form  half  as  much.  Yes,  it  is  costly.  The  whole  outfit  will  cost  just  about 
what  a  city  building  lot  will  cost  in  any  town  worth  living  in  and  not  on  a 
principal  street  either.  In  other  words,  the  moment  the  farmermovesto  town 
to  secure  "modern  conveniences,"  he  planks  down  at  the  outset  for  a  build- 
ing site  as  much  money  as  it  would  take  to  provide  all  these  things  and 
more  on  the  farm  he  has  left  behind.  Then,  in  addition,  he  will  need  to 
draw  generous  quarterly  checks  for  water  rates,  gas  bills,  electric  lights 
and  invest  from  two  to  three  thousand  additional  for  income  to  meet  the 
extra  cost  of  taxation. 

So  recently  have  these  things  been  possible  that  they  are  not  known 
among  farmers  generally.  The  farmer  doesn't  leave  the  farm  because  he 
wants  to  live  in  town.  He  is  lost  and  unhappy  when  he  gets  there.  He 
goes  to  secure  comfort  for  those  he  loves,  and  for  no  other  reason.  It 
is  the  business  of  our  colleges  of  agriculture  to  make  known  as  widely 
and  as  rapidly  as  may  be  the  modern  possibilities  for  making  the  country 
comfortable.      It  is  engaged  in  no  higher  or  more  worthy  work. 

Many  of  the  choicest  physical  blessings  are  inherent  in  country  life, 
such  as  good  air,  plenty  of  room,  open  sunshine,  and  comparative  freedom 
from  dangerously  infectious  diseases.  Others  are  being  rapidly  added,  such 
as  the  telephone,  which  is  both  better  and  cheaper  than  in  the  city;  the 
rural  delivery  of  mail  by  which  the  farms  are  better  served  than  are  most 
towns;  and  the  consolidated  secondary  school  by  which  the  farmers'  chil- 
dren will  soon  receive  literally  from  the  father's  roof  the  best  education 
in  the  world.  When,  now,  we  have  learned  to  build  comfortable  homes 
for  ourselves  and  our  children,  then  will  the  country  be  of  all  places  for 
living  the  most  delightful  and  the  most  desirable  from  the  greatest  variety 
of  standpoints. 

5.  The  country  beautiful.  Time  and  space  are  all  too  short  for  say- 
ing all  that  ought  to  be  said  about  the  human  side  of  agricultural  devel- 
opment, but  I  shall  steal  a  word  and  a  moment  to  enter  a  plea  for  the 
country  beautiful;  something  to  please  the  eye  and  uplift  the  soul;  some- 
thing beyond  the  body;  something  that  shall  foreshadow  here  what  Heav- 
en may  be  hereafter. 

First  of  all,  I  plead  for  the  early  evolution  of  a  suitable  country  archi- 
tecture: for  house  and  barn  exteriors  that  shall  blend  with  the  natural 
features  of  their  surroundings.  We  build  a  barn  on  the  ugliest  lines  that 
human  ingenuity  can  devise,  then  go  the  limits  by  painting  it  red  and 
wonder  why  it  is  so  often  struck  by  lightning. 

Our  houses,  for  the  most  part,  are  not  things  of  the  country.  They 
are  town  houses,  high  and  narrow  with  peaked  roofs  with  several  varieties 
•f  gingerbread  gimcrackery,  loaded  everywhere  on  cornice  and  porch.  They 
look  as  if  they  had  been  pulled  up  by  the  roots  out  of  the  nearest  town 
and  stuck  down  in  the  country,  where  they  are  about  as  much  out  of  place 
a«  painted   scenery  at  Niagara  gorge,  tin  palms  in   a  hotel  corridor,  arti- 

11 


iicial  flowers  in  a  bouquet  of  American  Beauty  roses: — as  much  out  of 
place  as  a  galvanized  iron  lion  or  a  cast  iron  flunky  for  a  hitching  post 
in  front  of  a  city  residence. 

Let  the  country  house  be  built  on  good  lines  within  and  without.  Let 
it  be  generously  and  hospitably  big,  with  broad  low  roof  and  wide  pro- 
jection. Let  it  be  surrounded  by  porches  wide  and  deep,  and  inside  let 
the  rooms  be  generous  and  the  stairways  broad.  Let  the  colors  every- 
where be  strong  but  soft,  and  outside  let  it  blend  into  its  setting  of  lawn 
and  trees  as  if  this  home  had  been  builded  in  a  spot  which  Nature  had 
made  expressly  for  the  purpose  where  a  family  might  live  and  where  chil- 
dren might  be  born  and  grow  up  and  go  out  into  the  world  to  engage  in 
and  succeed  in  many  things,  but  never  to  forget  the  childhood  home  of 
blessed  memory. 

All  this  is  a  sentimental  side  of  our  business,  I  know,  but  after  all, 
sentiment  is  the  strongest  thing  in  the  world,  and  you  and  I  may  not  know 
the  racial  asset  of  a  dozen  generations  born  and  reared  in  such  homes  as 
may  now  be  established  on  the  farm. 

It  is  traditional  to  assume  a  plain,  hard  life,  destitute  of  comforts  for  the 
family  on  the  farm.  In  this  we  do  err.  Nothing  is  farther  from  the  es- 
sential. We  cannot  build  and  maintain  a  permanent  agriculture  on  that 
proposition.  In  such  an  assumption  we  confuse  the  necessary  hardships  of 
the  pioneer  with  the  possibilities  of  the  open  country. 

Farming  and  pioneering  started  off  together.  Nature  was  unsubdued. 
Men  and  women  were  poor,  and  life  was  hard  at  the  best  when  necessities 
were  counted  luxuries.  But  those  days  are  over  on  real  agriculture  lands. 
There  are  non-agricultural  lands  where  country  life  will  continue  hard,  but 
this  is  not  American  agriculture.  These  are  not  farmers.  Look 
for  American  agriculture  on  agricultural  lands  and  you  will  find 
it  in  any  State  of  the  Union.  Here  pioneering  and  farming  have  parted 
company  forever.  Farming  will  go  its  way  on  its  own  plan  and  if  you 
look  for  it  here,  you  will  find  it  a  thousand  years  from  now.  I  wonder 
what  it  will  be  like?  The  people  then  will  be  our  descendants;  yours  and 
mine.  I  wonder  what  they  will  think  of  us,  and  how  they  will  record  his- 
tory between  now  and  then?  I  should  like  to  be  well  thought  of  by  them, 
for  they  ought  to  be  a  very  superior  people,  and  they  will  be  if  we  all  be 
wise,  for  what  they  are  then  will  depend  not  a  little  upon  what  we  do  now. 
Let  us  at  once  set  about  building  country  homes  that  shall  last  for 
generations.  Let  us  give  them  plenty  of  room,  with  broad  lawns  and  much 
grass.  Let  there  be  some  flowers  and  shrubbery  to  add  a  touch  of  bright- 
ness but  above  all,  let  there  be  trees,  trees,  long-lived  trees,  that  will 
tell  the  children  of  the  future  that  their  grandfathers,  who  are  we,  took 
thought  for  them.  Let  the  whole  picture  have  its  setting  in  a  natural 
frame  of  forests  and  of  hills,  of  fields  where  cattle  be,  of  meadows  and 
lakes  and  running  water.  So  shall  we  build  and  in  this  way  only  leave 
our  best  thoughts  behind.      So  will  the  farm  at  last  come   into  its  own. 

6.  The  country  educated.  And  now  I  come  to  the  last,  which  is  also 
the  greatest  of  the  separate  features  of  agricultural  development.  I  refer 
to  the  education  and  the  culture  of  the  men  and  women  who  shall  live 
upon  the  land  and  till  our  soil — it  is  ours  and  not  theirs — who  shall  think 
our  thoughts  as  we  cannot  think  them  amid  the  stress  and  strain  and  strug- 
gle of  the  city;  who  shall  keep  the  country  as  the  great  breeding  ground 
where  children  may  grow  up  into  men  and  women  without  that  prema- 
turity and  that  dangerous  sophistication  that  mark  so  many  of  the  city 
born  and  bred. 

12 


This  matter  involves  the  whole  philosophy  of  agricultural  education, 
both  of  collegiate  and  secondary  grade;  indeed,  it  covers  a  large  part  of 
our  educational  effort,  for  it  involves  the  education  of  half  our  population, 
and  on   this   matter,   I  beg  to  speak  briefly  but  to  the  point. 

Agricultural  education  is  but  a  feature,  albeit  a  large  and  important 
one,  but  none  the  less  it  is  a  feature  of  our  system  of  universal  educa- 
tion, and  the  spirit  and  purpose  of  this  system,  as  I  understand  it,  is  this: 
To  so  educate  all  men  as  to  make  them  first  of  all  self-supporting  and  use- 
ful contributors  to  some  feature — no  matter  what — of  the  public  good; 
and  second,  to  encourage  and  develop  in  their  several  personalities  the  best 
that  is  in  them  as  human  beings  and  members  of  a  rapidly  advancing  soci- 
ety, whose  capabilities,  if  not  unlimited,  are  as  yet  unknown. 

Universal  education  is  an  attempt  to  make  the  most  not  only  of  the 
exceptional  man  but  of  all  normal  men,  the  masses  of  whom  really  repre- 
sent the  race,  and  limit  its  achievements  and  advance.  As  half  the  people 
live  by  farming,  the  problem  of  agricultural  education  shoulders  one-half 
the  problem  of  universal  education,  at  least  so  far  as  numbers  go;  more- 
over, it  is  the  half  that  will  have  more  than  its  share  to  do  in  fixing  the 
future  of  all  classes.  How  now  shall  agricultural  education  be  conducted 
so  as  to  meet  these  broad  requirements  felt  alike  by  farmers  and  all  other 
members  of  our  social  body? 

First  of  all,  agricultural  education  must  be  so  conducted  as  to  make 
the  farmers  efficient  in  a  business  way.  It  has  taken  more  than  a  genera- 
tion to  begin  to  find  all  that  is  involved  in  this  feature  only  of  education 
for  the  business  of  farming,  and  few  men  yet  realize  that,  of  all  forms  of 
education,  that  in  technical  agriculture  is  the  most  costly  if  it  is  made  good 
enough  to  be  really  worth  while.  The  young  man  does  not  want  to  study 
about  cattle;  he  needs  to  study  cattle  themselves,  a  distinction  not  yet 
observed,  I  am  sorry  to  say,   in  some  of  our  institutions  of  learning. 

The  young  man  who  is  fitting  himself  for  farming  wants  not  a  mass  of 
information  about  present  day  agricultural  practice:  that  will  pass  and  it 
ought  to  pass.  It  is  comparatively  easy  to  teach  but  it  will  be  out  of  date 
and  gone  before  it  can  serve  a  man  now  in  school,  as  a  definite  guide  to 
procedure. 

What  he  wants  from  a  business  standpoint  is  instruction  in  the  prin- 
ciples involved  in  agriculture  so  far  as  they  are  known  and  in  methods  of 
investigation  after  the  unknown;  that  he  may  keep  himself  intelligent  as 
this  great  business  of  agricultural  development  proceeds  before  his  eyes 
day  by  day.  All  this  is  extremely  difficult  for  both  teacher  and  student, 
and  it  involves  an  expense  for  skilled  men,  for  equipment  and  for  re- 
search, such  as  is  not  yet  appreciated  by  anybody,  much  less  by  public  men. 

Teachers  and  investigators  who  have  skill  in  this  line  are  few  and 
their  services  are  extremely  valuable;  so  valuable  that  the  State  which  fills 
its  quota  with  the  best  must  stand  ready  to  pay  teaching  salaries  such  as 
have  never  yet  been  paid.  They  must  also  devote  money  to  equipment 
and  facilities  for  research  to  an  extent  which  makes  all  that  has  yet  been 
done  look  microscopic  and  miserable — all  this  must  be  done  if  this  develop- 
ment of  agriculture  is  to  proceed  along  all  these  lines  as  fast  and  as  sure- 
ly as  it  ought  to  proceed. 

So  much  for  the  technical  side;  for  what  a  man  must  know  if  he  is 
to  occupy  the  soil  of  the  public  domain  to  the  best  advantage  to  himself 
and  to  the  State.  Because  of  what  I  am  about  to  say,  and  lest  I  then  be 
misunderstood,  let  me  remark  before  passing,  that  I  am  a  stickler  for 
technical  education  both  collegiate  and  secondary  and  for  agricultural  re- 

13 


search  of  the  most  strictly  technical  character  beyond  anything  that  any 
man  has  ever  yet  dared  to  propose. 

But  that  is  not  all.  There  remains  a  human  side  to  agriculture.  The 
farmer  is  not  only  a  tiller  of  the  soil;  he  is  a  man  and  a  member  of  our 
permanent  society;  moreover,  he  is  a  voting  member  of  the  body  politic. 
This  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  as  a  man  he  possesses  inherent  priv- 
ileges for  himself  and  owes  substantial  duties  to  the  community  quite  out- 
side and  beyond  the  limits  of  his  vocation  and  his  education  therefor. 

So  I  enter  a  protest  against  that  philosophy  of  education  and  that 
system  of  schools  which  would  by  design  or  by  necessity  confine  the  educa- 
tion of  a  farmer  or  of  any  other  man,  industrial  or  non-industrial,  to  the 
limits  of  his  vocational  and  business  needs. 

Every  man  is  or  ought  to  be  bigger  than  his  business.  He  does  not 
need  and  should  not  be  so  educated  as  to  live  for  his  business;  he  is  in 
business  that  he  may  live,  and  the  large  question — the  largest  of  all  ques- 
tions before  any  man  is,  what  shall  he  do  with  himself?  what  shall  he  do 
with  the  result  of  his  earnings?  how  shall  he  justify  his  existence?  He 
has  a  right  to  be  so  educated  as  to  answer  these  questions,  which  are  final: 
to  be  in  business  for  something  other  than  to  conduct  business  or  while 
away  the  time. 

And  so  a  good  part  of  the  education  of  the  farmer  as  of  other  men 
is,  or  should  be,  non-vocational,  and  of  such  character  as  shall  best  suit  his 
individual  tastes  and  surroundings.  It  will  be  history  and  economics  for 
one,  philosophy  for  another,  language  and  the  classics  for  a  third,  music, 
painting  or  some  other  form  of  art  for  others — I  care  not  what  it  is,  only 
so  that  it  is  something  that  develops  human  faculties  outside  vocational 
needs,  and  only  so  it  serves  to  broaden  rather  than  to  narrow  which  is 
the  inevitable  consequence  of  valuable  technical  training. 

I  therefore  enter  a  plea  and  a  demand  for  the  broadest  possible  views 
regarding  agricultural  education.  The  farmer  as  a  man  is  no  different 
than  other  men,  unless  we  make  him  so  by  our  education,  and  if  we 
do  that,  the  time  will  come  when  other  men  of  other  classes  will  share  with 
him  the  consequences  of  a  short-sighted  and  inadequate  system  of  educa- 
tion for  industrial  purposes. 

A  scheme  for  the  education  of  farmers  in  separate  schools  is  being  in- 
dustriously advocated  these  days  by  a  class  of  educators  who  seem  to  feel 
that  a  little  education  and  that  almost  exclusively  technical  is  sufficient  for 
farming  purposes  and  that  the  European  peasant  school  is  our  model.  The  ad- 
vocates of  this  sort  of  school  overlook  certain  important  features  of  agri- 
cultural education  and  of  the  philosophy  of  education  in  general;  they  over- 
look the  fact  that  the  prospective  farmer  should  be  educated  as  a  man  as 
well  as  a  farmer;  in  other  words,  that  the  farmer's,  like  every  man's  edu- 
cation should  include  both  the  technical  and  the  non-technical;  both  the 
vocational  and  the  non-vocational. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  we  cannot  safely  educate  separate  pro- 
fessions in  separate  schools,  for  to  do  so  is  to  build  up  distinct 
classes  each  educated  for  and  prejudiced  in  its  own  affairs  and  against 
the  world. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  there  is  a  great  body  of  knowledge  that 
can  form  the  background  and  the  backbone  of  the  education  of  all  men  for 
all  pursuits,  and  that  this  is  our  chiefest  reliance  for  holding  our  people 
together  as  one  people. 

They  overlook  the  highly  educational  influences  of  mere  association  witk 
•tker  men  as  secured  in  universities  which  fit  for  all  the  affairs  of  life. 

14 


They  overlook  the  capacity  of  the  American  secondary  school  to  still  further 
broaden  its  curriculum  and  widen  its  educational  influence.  This  thor- 
oughly unique  American  institution  is  abundantly  able  to  reflect  in  its  at- 
mosphere and  its  class  rooms  the  same  cosmopolitan  influence  that  consti- 
tutes the  chief  distinction  of  American  universities. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  our  high  schools  are  not  "city  schools" 
wholly  given  over  to  the  affairs  of  the  city.  They  are  schools  of  the  peo- 
ple in  the  best  and  highest  sense  of  the  term,  willing  and  able  to  reflect  all 
the  major  interests  of  the  people  of  their  respective  communities. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  to  establish  separate  agricultural  schools 
of  an  inferior  grade  for  country  people  would  fail  to  serve,  with  the  edu- 
cation best  suited  to  their  needs,  that  large  element  of  the  country  born 
that  is  not  adapted  to  farm  life. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  the  European  system  of  education  was 
evolved  after  distinct  social  classes  had  been  established  by  generations  of 
political  and  economic  influences,  whose  repetition  in  America  it  was  the 
special   purpose   of  our  Puritan   forefathers   to   prevent. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  in  America  the  country  people  have  not 
as  yet  been  peasantized,  but  that  so  far  we  are  a  homogenous  people  ex- 
cept for  immigration,  which  is  a  city  and  not  a  country  problem. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  to  educate  farmers  by  themselves  in 
separate  schools  almost  purely  technical  and  distinctly  inferior  both  in 
breadth  and  intensity  to  the  high  schools  in  which  other  classes  are  edu- 
cated— that  to  do  this  thing  is  to  peasantize  the  farmers  more  rapidly  and 
more  completely  than  they  were  ever  peasantized  in  Europe  or  than  would 
be  possible  by  any  other  method  that  could  be  devised  by  the  ingenuity 
of  man. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  to  peasantize  the  schools  wherein  farmers 
may  be  educated  is  to.  peasantize  the  farmers  themselves,  the  first  effect 
of  which  is  to  put  them  out  of  sympathy  with  other  classes,  and  the  other 
effect  will  be  to  limit  their  very  ability  as  occupants  and  managers  of  the 
land,  and  their  economic  efficiency  as  farmers,  after  which  will  be  due  and 
payable  to  men  of  all  interests  and  all  classes  the  social  and  political  con- 
sequences of  this  proposed  educational  sin. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  this  sort  of  educational  philosophy,  ex- 
tended to  its  conclusion,  would  demand  that  all  men  be  educated  exclusively 
to  vocational  ends  each  in  their  separate  schools,  out  of  touch  and  out  of 
sympathy  with  the  rights  and  ideals  and  ambitions  of  other  classes,  the 
only  final  consequence  of  which  is  social  chaos  and  political  anarchy,  be- 
cause if  our  people  are  once  broken  up  into  classes  according  to  occupation, 
they  can  never  again  be  amalgamated. 

They  overlook  what  has  been  achieved  in  universities  like  yours  where- 
in men  of  all  conceivable  purposes  are  educated  both  separately  and  to- 
gether in  a  common  atmosphere  of  democratic  wholesomeness. 

This  matter  of  the  education  of  many  men  for  many  occupations  but 
for  one  citizenship  has  settled  itself  and  settled  itself  right  on  college 
levels  in  very  many  of  our  States.  I  congratulate  you  that  in  your  State 
all  these  educational  purposes  and  achievements  are  brought  together  in 
a  single  institution.  If  you  will  carry  the  same  ideal  into  your  secondary 
schools  you  will  have  a  people  with  a  common  stock  of  education  and  a 
common  bond  of  sympathy,  because  the  different  classes,  having  been  edu- 
cated together,  understand  each  other. 

Iwould  have  Americans  so  educated  that  in  a  company  you  cannot  tell 
by  the  dress,  the  language,   or  the  manner  of  a  man  what  his  occupation 

15 


is.  Your  educational  policy  will  achieve  all  this  and  by  it  you  may  have  all 
this  with  no  detriment  to  business  efficiency,  but  in  the  end,  to  its  very  great 
advantage  in  every  way. 

I  have  not  the  command  of  English,  or  else  the  language  is  unable  to 
express  my  exceeding  disapproval  and  alarm  at  the  growing  disposition  to 
copy  European  peasant  and  trade  schools  and  fix  these  alien  institutions 
in  free  America,  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  save  ourselves  the  trouble  of 
really  studying  our  own  educational  problem  as  a  whole  and  evolving  for 
ourselves  a  thoroughly  American  system  of  education  both  vocational  and 
non-vocational.  It  is  our  business  to  hold  our  schools  together  till  we  can 
work  out  these  problems  on  the  broadest  grounds. 

I  speak  of  this  at  length  because  we  in  agriculture  are  the  original 
and  greatest  sinners  in  respect  to  the  separate  school.  It  was  apparently 
necessary  a  half  century  ago;  it  is  necessary  no  longer  and  it  is  for  us  to 
lead  the  way  back  into  sane  and  safe  territory  for  the  completion  of  our 
educational  evolution. 

If  we  hold  our  schools  together  and  work  this  problem  out,  then  every 
man  can  have  two  educations,  one  that  is  vocational,  making  him  efficient 
and  independent  and  one  that  is  non-vocational,  making  him  broader; 
and  if  we  do  not,  then  we  shall  break  into  many  classes,  some  of  which 
will  have  all  the  vocation  and  others  will  have  all  the  culture — the  rock 
on  which  nations  are  wrecked.  So  much  for  the  country  educated,  and 
its  relation  to  the  rest  of  the  world  and  to  mankind. 

AGRICULTURAL  DEVELOPMENT  A  PUBLIC  INVESTMENT. 

The  development  of  American  agriculture,  until  it  shall  be  profitable, 
productive  and  permanent  and  until  the  country  shall  be  both  comfortable 
and  beautiful,  and  the  people  educated — all  this,  will  cost  money,  stupen- 
dous amounts  of  it,  as  we  are  accustomed  to  measure  values  in  private  life, 
for  it  means  a  reorganization  and  very  largely  a  redirection  of  the  lives  and 
purposes  and  the  achievements  of  at  least  a  third  of  our  great  people. 

If  it  were  solely  a  matter  of  their  own  concern,  we  might  leave  them  to 
provide  for  this  development  or  let  matters  rest  as  they  are.  But  in  the 
last  analysis  the  development  of  agriculture  is  a  public  question.  The 
farmers  are  interested  in  it,  of  course,  and  for  selfish  reasons,  but  even  if 
they  were  not  interested,  we  should  still  insist  for  public  reasons  that  our 
.agriculture  should  be  developed  to  the  utmost.  The  farriers  will  reap  the  first 
advantages  of  such  development,  to  be  sure,  but  they  can  realize  no  advan- 
tage that  is  not  shared  with  all  interests  of  all  people  everywhere. 

The  farmers  have  developed  the  handicraft  of  farming,  or  the  art  of 
agriculture  if  you  please,  about  as  far  as  experience  alone  can  take  it. 
What  is  next  needed  is  the  study  and  promulgation  of  the  scientific  princi- 
ples involved  in  agricultural  practice  and  in  this  field  experience  may  cor- 
rect and  help  to  shape  up  results,  but  it  cannot  originate.  This  is  the  great 
work  of  the  Experiment  Stations  as  is  the  education  in  these  principles  the 
business  of  the  Colleges. 

These  institutions  then  stand  in  the  very  forefront  of  further  agri- 
cultural progress  and  the  rate  of  this  progress  will  depend  upon  the 
amounts  of  money  which  the  public  is  willing  to  put  into  the  effort,  and 
the  mutual  inclination  and  ability  of  the  universities  and  the  farmers  to 
.go  along  together.  In  most  States  these  relations  are  now  of  the  closest 
and  from  now  on  agricultural  development  is  almost  wholly  a  matter  of 
money. 

This  is  evident  so  far  as  research  is  concerned.  It  is  surprisingly  true 
also  as  to  attendance  of  students  which  is  in  almost  direct  proportion  to 

16 


the  amounts  of  money  put  into  their  instruction;  moreover,  speaking  from 
the  experience  of  Illinois,  the  curve  of  attendance  follows  and  does  not 
precede  increase  in  funds.  You  will  pardon  my  somewhat  extended  ref- 
erence here  to  the  State  I  represent.  I  do  it  only  because  I  happen  to  be 
familiar  with  the  facts  for  that  State  and  because  they  illustrate  the  prin- 
ciple I  seek  to  elucidate. 

Illinois  has  led  in  the  amounts  of  money  which  she  has  been  willing 
to  devote  to  the  development  of  her  agriculture,  New  York  has  been  a  close 
second,  and  other  States  are  coming  along.  These  amounts  and  their  grad- 
ual growth  are  shown  in  the  following,  table  together  with  the  increase  in 
the  faculty  and  the  related  increase  in  bona  fide  agricultural  students: 

Faculty  Students 

Funds  College  &  Regis-       Gradu- 

Year  College  Station  Station  tered  ating 

90 — 91    ...$      5,000  15,000  3  7  2 

91 — 92 5,000  15,000  3  6  0 

92 — 93 5,000  15,000  3  13  2 

93 — 94 5,000  15,000  3  5  1 

94 — 95    5,000  15,000  3  9  0 

95 — 96 7,000  15,000  3  14  0 

96 — 97 7,000  15,000  6  17  2 

97 — 98 7,000  15,000  8  19  2 

98 — 99 7,000  15,000  9  25  4 

99 — 00    28,000  15,000  16  90  2 

00 — 01 28,000  15,000  17  159  4 

01 — 02 34,000  69,000  23  232  4 

02 — 03 34,000  69,000  27  284  9 

03 — 04    90,000  100,000  37  339  10 

04 — 05 90,000  100,000  37  406  18 

05 — 06 91,000  110,000  44  430  24 

06 — 07 91,000  110,000  50  462  43 

07 — 08 102,000  126,500  61  528  38 

08 — 09    104,500  128,500  63             est.    550  53 

This  seems  to  be  a  worthy  record  but  the  amounts  are  grossly  insuffi- 
cient to  meet  the  demands  that  are  now  upon  the  State  University  and 
that  are  increasing  every  day,  as  shown  by  the  attendance  of  students  and 
by  the  correspondence  asking  information  which  now  amounts  to  approxi- 
mately fifteen  thousand  letters  a  year. 

The  incompleteness  of  these  funds  for  present  needs  is  shown  in  the 
following  list  of  of  amounts  agreed  upon  by  the  advisory  committees  of  the 
farmers  themselves  to  be  asked  of  the  present  legislature: 

Annually  Biennially 

For  Instruction  (College)    $    70,000  $140,000 

For  Buildings    (College  and  Station)    162,500 

For  Soil  Investigations  (Station)    100,000  200,000 

For  Crop  Investigations  (Station)    30,000  60,000 

For  Live  Stock  Investigations  (Station)    70,000  140,000 

For  Dairy  Investigations  (Station)    51,150  102,300 

For  Horticultural  Investigations  (Station)    .  .  40,000  80,000 

For  Floricultural  Investigations  (Station)    ...  17,500  35,000 


$378,650  $919,800 


17 


These  amounts  may  seem  large  and  in  a  sense  they  are,  but  think  first 
of  what  they  can  accomplish  for  a  commonwealth  and  what  an  agricul- 
ture it  can  build  up  if  such  a  policy  is  instituted  and  pursued.  But  can  a 
State  endure  such  an  expense?  Again,  all  things  are  relative.  The  largest 
of  these  amounts  is  for  investigation  and  their  total  is  less  than  a  cent  an 
acre  a  year  for  Illinois  lands.  Surely  the  results  of  experiments  are  worth 
many  times  this  amount  aside  from  the  fact  that  the  increased  earning  pow- 
er of  the  State  because  of  the  work  of  the  station  has  already  done  more 
than  pay  all  expenses  of  the  Station,  the  whole  university  and  of  the  nor- 
mal schools  besides.  So  we  are  asking  for  no  new  money,  only  for  a  larger 
share  of  what  has  already  been  earned. 

It  is  significant,  too,  that  while  Chicago  pays  40  per  cent  of  the  Illinois 
tax,  she  has  never  demurred  at  anything  that  would  build  up  the  agricul- 
ture of  the  State  in  which  the  prosperity  of  that  great  city  so  largely  rests. 
Chicago  is  not  frightened  by  the  size  of  a  proposition  if  only  it  pays  in  the 
end. 

The  farmers  of  Illinois  produce  every  day  of  the  year,  winter  and 
summer,  in  sunshine  or  in  rain,  a  million  and  a  half  of  dollars  of  new 
wealth.  They  propose  this  winter,  with  legislative  consent  to  devote  a 
little  over  a  half  day's  work  to  this  business  of  agricultural  instruction  and 
investigation,  looking  to  the  further  development  of  our  greatest  producing 
industry.  Yes,  all  things  are  relative,  and  it  is  proportions  and  needs  rath- 
er than  magnitudes  that  we  must  study. 

Again  these  amounts  are  small  when  compared  with  the  perfectly  stu- 
pendous outlays  for  charitable  and  worthy,  yet  non-productive  purposes. 
The  following  table  shows  how  these  amounts  compare  in  Illinois  for  the 
current  biennium: 

Relative  Amounts  Devoted  to  Public  Purposes.  Illinois — two  years — 1907-8. 

Productive 

Agricultural  Experiment  Station .  $     205,000 — 1  per  cent 

Agricultural  College 125,000 —   V2  per  cent 

Total  Agricultural  Education 330,000 — 1%  per  cent 

University 1,841,290 — 9  per  cent 

Normal  Schools  (five)    941,974 — 5  per  cent 

Total  educational 3,113,264 — 15  per  cent 

Non-productive 

Insane 4,696,000 — 23  per  cent 

Penal 2,329,100 — 12  per  cent 

Defective  children 972,900 —  5  per   cent 

Other    dependents    1,669,402—  8  per  cent 

Total  non-productive 9,667,402—48      per  cent 

By  this  we  see  that  Illinois  is  putting  into  the  development  of  its 
agriculture  less  than  half  as  much  as  into  the  education  and  care  of  its 
defective  children.  By  this  we  see  that  its  State  University  is  not  yet  on 
a  level  with  its  penal  institutions;  that  is,  that  our  penitentiaries  are  now 
absorbing  a  larger  share  of  the  public  resources  than  is  devoted  to  higher 
education  and  research  in  the  university  and  nearly  as  much  as  the  uni- 
versity and  five  normal  schools  combined.* 

*It  is  significant  in  this  connection  that  Michigan  has  spent  almost 
equal  amounts  of  money  since  its  admission  to  the  Union  on  its  great  uni- 
versity and  its  penitentiary  at  Jackson. 

18 


By  this  we  see  that  Illinois  could  increase  her  endowment  for  agricul- 
ture more  than  fifteen  times  and  still  devote  less  to  the  development  of  this 
great  industry  than  it  costs  to  care  for  her  insane.  By  this  we  see,  too, 
that  4S  per  cent  of  all  our  public  outlay  is  for  non-producing  purposes. 

Now  the  care  of  our  dependents  is  a  moral  charge  upon  us  and  I  would 
not  shirk  it,  but  it  produces  nothing  and  contributes  nothing  to  develop- 
ment and  I  propose  a  new  plan — the  Dollar  for  Dollar  principle.  I  mean, 
by  this,  that  every  time  we  expend  a  dollar  in  charity  for  non-productive 
purposes,  we  put  down  another  dollar  to  develop  the  resources  of  the  State.** 
**See  Peoria  Address — The  Development  of  the  Natural  Resources  of 
a  State. 

I  wish  I  could  in  some  vivid  way  impress  upon  you  the  enormous  dis- 
crepancy in  this  respect  at  present  and  make  you  understand  and  appreciate 
how  exclusively,  almost,  our  public  outlays  are  going  into  non-productive 
channels.  If,  for  example,  we  denote  the  amount  expended  in  Illinois  for 
the  College  of  Agriculture  by  the  distance  from  Boston  to  Utica,  then  the 
amount  expended  for  the  work  of  the  Experiment  Station  would  be  repre- 
sented by  the  distance  from  Boston  to  Buffalo. 

But  the  amounts  devoted  to  the  care  of  defective  children  on  the  same 
scale  would  reach  from  Boston  to  Salt  Lake  City;  those  for  our  prisoners 
would  pass  the  western  coast  line  and  reach  out  into  the  Pacific  beyond 
the  Hawaiian  Islands,  while  the  expense  of  the  insane  on  the  same  scale 
would  reach  from  Boston  across  our  continent,  across  the  Pacific  and  into  the 
heart  of  Mongolia  in  Central  Asia,  or  if  we  should  go  to  the  east  it  would 
land  in  almost  the  same  spot,  reaching,  as  it  does,  little  over  half  way 
round  the  world. 

If  you  combine  all  the  expenditures  for  all  non-productive  dependents, 
it  would  reach  around  the  world  and  overlap  a  thousand  miles  beside, 
against  which  our  distance  from  Boston  to  Buffalo  as  representing  agricul- 
ture is  not  even  a  respectable  Sabbath  day's  journey. 

With  comparisons  such  as  these  it  is  folly  to  say  that  a  State  cannot  af- 
ford the  most  liberal  support  of  college  and  station  work.  Charity  is  com- 
mendable and  in  every  way  worthy  but  after  all  it  is  non-productive  and 
money  so  expended  is  gone  forever. 

Agricultural  improvement,  on  the  other  hand,  is  enormously  produc- 
tive and  money  expended  in  its  development  is  money  not  expended  but 
money  invested,  for  the  returns  are  both  enormous  and  perpetual.  Every 
bushel  added  to  the  yield  of  Illinois  cornfields  adds  three  million  dollars 
to  the  income  of  the  State.  Every  disease  and  every  insect  and  fungus 
enemy  which  we  learn  to  control  saves  enormous  values  to  the  country.* 

*Bitter  rot  alone  took  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  apples  out  of  four 
counties  of  Illinois  without  warning  in  1902. 

Every  contribution  to  our  knowledge  of  soil  management  is  of  direct 
public  benefit  as  surely  as  are  improved  methods  of  mining,  and  every  step 
towards  a  permanent  agriculture  is  a  step  along  the  road  that  must  be 
traveled  before  we  can  talk  about  an  assured  future. 

Yes,  in  every  way  money  expended  for  agricultural  development  is  not 
an  outlay,  it  is  money  invested  in  the  safest  bank  on  earth — the  soil  of  the 
commonwealth  and  the  people  on  whom  we  must  depend  for  its  manage- 
ment and  in  whom  the  balance  of  power  will  always  rest.  Cannot  any  State 
afford  to  devote  as  much  to  its  agriculture  as  to  its  prisoners?  Can  it  afford 
not  to  do  it? 

They  cannot  afford  not  to  do  it,  first,  because  agriculture  needs  it,  and, 
second,  because  the  development  of  our  producing  industries  and  of  the  pro- 

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ductive  powers  of  the  people  is  the  best  protection  against  the  crushing  bur- 
den of  non-producing  dependents. 

The  amounts  which  most  States  have  as  yet  been  willing  to  devote  to 
agriculture  are  pitifully  inadequate  and  absurdly  small.  This  is  not  from 
prejudice  against  agriculture,  but  it  is  because  we  have  not  yet  learned  to 
spend  money  that  way,  just  as  we  buy  buggies  freely  but  cannot  generally 
"afford"  bath-rooms. 

The  agricultural  problems  of  Maine  are  as  many  and  as  diverse  as  are 
those  of  Texas  or  of  Illinois,  and  their  safe  solution  is  of  more  immediate 
and  perpetual  public  concern  than  any  other  question  of  public  policy.  I 
therefore  close  with  the  thought  of  dollar  for  dollar;  that  is,  a  dollar  for  de- 
velopment against  every  dollar  needed  for  charity,  and  as  a  corollary  in 
behalf  of  agriculture,  I  propose  as  a  temporary  policy  that  as  much  be 
devoted  to  the  development  of  our  agriculture  as  to  the  support  of  our 
penitentiaries. 

I  beg  of  you  in  the  strongest  terms  to  study  these  questions  in  all  their 
meaning  both  now  and  in  the  future.  And  when  you  see  their  full  signifi- 
cance and  real  bearing,  be  outspoken  and  insistent  that  your  commonwealth 
at  once  adopt  policies  that  shall  put  agriculture  on  a  new  basis  both  eco- 
nomically and  educationally.  Ask  it;  urge  it;  plead  for  it;  demand  it,  for 
it  is  yours. 

This  is  agricultural  development  and  the  meaning  of  it. 


=i!ssl!i! 


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